Fitzgerald: Properly understood

If Islam had been properly understood, then not this idiotic “war on terror” but rather a war of self-defense, a war for human freedom, against the Jihad, would have been properly declared and articulated.

If Iraq had been properly understood, then this idiotic and messianic and polypragmonic dreamy desire to reshape Iraq and “the whole Middle East” would never have occurred to anyone, much less be obstinately held on to by Bush and Bush loyalists of all kinds. Instead, it would have been jetsam thrown overboard by a sauve-qui-peut captain of the listing ship of state, the S.S. Narrenschiff, long since.More and more people are beginning to realize what a mess Iraq was fated to be. Still, many more give no hint of understanding that, once the regime had been overthrown, everything else that followed — above all that sectarian fissure between Sunni and Shi’a — was not “possibly” to follow, not “likely” to follow, but was “inevitably” to follow. It was inevitable, and was described as such at Jihad Watch in early 2004, just as soon as it became appallingly clear, by the end of February or at the latest mid-March, that the Administration was serious about all this “bringing democracy” nonsense — instead of coolly calculating the benefits of exploiting the natural fissures, sectarian and ethnic, that were now free to widen and widen.

The Administration was incapable of understanding this. And therefore so were its loyalists. The opposition was similarly incapable of realizing this, and thus of making the most convincing and most appealing case for prompt American withdrawal. Both sides still are incapable, it seems, of fully grasping this. But some of the returning soldiers and Marines with whom I have recently spoken seem completely willing to listen, and to comprehend, when the whole thing is laid out. After all, they have seen the so-called “brave Iraqis” who supposedly “want freedom” and are willing to shoulder the burden of defending it. They know that “Iraq” does not exist, that the “Iraqi” army and “Iraqi” police do not exist. They may not quite realize why Sunni-Shi’a hostilities within Iraq can only serve to weaken the camp of Islam and Jihad by dividing and demoralizing it — and not only in Iraq. They may not quite fully realize why an independent Kurdistan would weaken not only Syria and Iran (both of which need weakening), even threatening their territorial integrity, but would also serve as a model — Kurdistan the Model, not Iraq the Model — for other non-Arab Muslims, such as the Berbers of Algeria and Morocco (and even of France). But they seem remarkably willing to listen.

And so now do others, including some in Congress who are likely, in the future, to have a major say in the formation of policy.

The Old Order passeth. Or possibly goeth. As prideful obstinacy, before a fall. Before the hideously expensive pratfall named “the Bush Administration’s policy in Iraq.”

Not a moment too soon.

For every day it becomes clearer: Islam, the Sharia law that the mujahedin wish upon all of us, is a failure.

It is a political failure, for it locates legitimacy not in the expressed will of the people, but in the will of Allah, as expressed by him in the uncreated and immutable Qur’an, and further glossed by the hadith.

It is an economic failure, for despite ten trillion dollars in OPEC oil revenues since 1973, the Muslim oil states have everywhere failed to create modern economies, and show no signs of doing so now — dependent as they remain on foreign workers for doing everything of significance.

It is a social failure, for it treats all women and non-Muslim men as legal and social inferiors, who are abused in many ways, and prevented from attaining to full equality.

It is an intellectual failure, for it offers a Total Regulation of Life and a Complete Explanation of the Universe that at every point discourages or even punishes independent thought and free and skeptical inquiry, and has no way to reform within itself as long as the Qur’an is not seen as a historical, man-created text but as something outside of history, and man, entirely.

Keep showing how Sharia is a complete failure. Help to create the conditions where the most advanced souls in the Islamic world will be forced to realize the connection between the political, economic, social, and intellectual failures of Islam, and what Islam itself is all about.

Do nothing to help them. Raise the issues at every conceivable opportunity. Show the connections outlined above.

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